Newbie on nems, looking at a rbta baby

[staindsoul]

Hello all, my tank has been up for 7 months now. There is a local guy that has a rbta from a recent split. He is already picking up a zoa frag from me, and I was thinking about getting the rbta from him. What major things do I need to know or is there a good thread for me to read through. The anemone f.a.q link doesn't load for me for some reason. Is it down or on my end?

 

[Tmoriarty]

What are some of your tank conditions? as long as everything is stable, you have sub 20 nitrates, and little to no phosphates. You should be fine. Lighting obviously matters, but BTA's require less light than some of the harder to keep anemone (magnificas/etc).

They prefer to wedge their feet deep into rock holes, if they can find one, sometimes under neath overhangs with their pedal disc extended around into the light. They can and will move so cover power heads and watch your other corals, if you have corals you are not willing to lose anemone might not be for you. If you are willing to take the risk to lose any other coral in the tank than anemone are a good fit.

Do not feed it to often, unless you want it to grow fast, if you want faster growth feed once/twice a week, but try to give a couple days between feedings, (enough time to purge the old waste), remember an anemone only has one mouth, which also acts as its method to expel waste.

If you have any other specific questions feel free to ask, if you think you want an RBTA than go for it. If you have false/true percs just know that they may oir may not take the the anemone, and if they do it could take any length of time (sometimes more than a year).

 

[staindsoul]

Alk 9.8dkh
Cal 480 ppm
Mag 1300
Po4- 0
No3- <5ppm
All Red Sea test kits

60 gallon cube w/1 coral beauty. Lighting is 2-kessil a150ws.

I have kept all my readings stable for the past 2 months and got my daily 2 part dosing down accurately. The skimmer is going great and the cheato is growing.

I have a pair of black a. Occelaris on my stocking list.

Lps dominant corals. 1 torch, 1 hammer, 2 frogs, some Duncan's, 1 toad. I am willing to lose or move those around to accommodate the rbta. Is it a large gamble on the clowns hosting the nem? Could I switch species of ethier the nem or clown to get a better fit?

If I get the nem from the guy, I know I have read place it in a rock hole just like you said and turn the pumps off for a period of time, correct? Anything else I need to know.

 

[Tmoriarty]

It is a gamble to get A. Ocellaris to associate with a BTA, they are not natural symbionts in the wild. However it is quite common to have them associate with BTA's in captivity (although they may choose any of your LPS instead, or the corner of your tank, or a power head).

If you want a natural host you would be looking at Magnificas and S. Giganteas for the most part, both are hard to keep and IMHO your lighting is not sufficient (I would compare a kessil 150 to a 70w Halide).

You should be able to keep BTA's under your current lights without issue (with proper acclimation). I would advice going with the BTA and taking the shot your clowns will associate, worse case scenario they do not and you can either switch anemone or switch clowns. FWIW I had True percs with multiple BTA's for close to a year and they refused to associate, once I added a magnifica however they associated in less than 30 minutes.

As for as what to do with adding them, yes letting them settle for a while before turning pumps back on is a good idea. Depending on how fast they take hold of the rock, you may not have to wait very long (I have had BTA's attach firmly in 10 minutes, especially local ones).

 

[staindsoul]

Thanks for the help Tyler.

 

[Tmoriarty]

No problem, if you need anything feel free to PM me anytime.

One last thing, if you go with the RBTA, depending on the light it came from you may need to acclimate it a little bit. Kessils are not to terribly powerful so you could probably start with them at 50% and increase by 10% or so every day or two until back up to 100%. This will help prevent light shock to the new addition (if it is comming from an LED tank already, don't bother with light acclimation.)

 

[frankthtank51]

tyler how you were saying light shock is that when the BTA open at night and closes during the day? bc that is what my BTA is doing right now. I just added him last week and thought it was bc it is to high up in my tank to close to the lights so i just pointed my power head directly at the BTA to hopefully move it down the tank

 

[Tmoriarty]

Nope, light shock signs are normally expelling of the zooxanthelle. My BTA's partially close up during the night on a regular basis. If he is happy at the top you can leave him at the top.

Light shock normally comes from a couple reasons. One is when they get shipped they spend quite some time (between their source and our tanks) before they really get any solid light. When you then throw a new lightsource (not the sun) into the mix they expel zooxanthelle and can bleach out from to much light to fast.

Another reason is if you bring them from another tank running say T5's, and put them under 400W MH's, you will see a difference, the increased light needs to be adjusted to. If the light sources are similar than it is not something you usually have to worry about.

 

[frankthtank51]

Oh ok thank you for the information. I didnot know what to do I never had any problems with my sebea. So every problem I see with my BTA I think is life threatening

 

[Tmoriarty]

BTA's are very hardy, if you were able to keep a sebae (and it is the same tank) than you should have no problem keeping a BTA.

My magnificas never deflate, they will ball up a little at night but do not deflate. My BTA's on occasion deflate and refill within a couple hours, but have been in my tank for quite some time (over a year). Different anemone act differently.

 

[mgproudfit]

On this topic, I have a 38g that has been up and running for 2.5 months now with very good stable conditions. Is my tank too young to add a nem? Im also looking at a BTA for my clowns. Thanks for any help!

-Matt

 

[frankthtank51]

Yes the sebea is in the same tank as the BTA...Today it has had its tips retracted all day with the lights on so i turned them off an hour early to see if it will inflant.


Mgproudfit i would wait about 8 months before putting in anemone in your tank. Just so the sucess rate is higher

 

[staindsoul]

i am pulling the trigger tomorrow! wish me luck!

 

[BTJR]

Here's a question for you. How come all 3 of my RTBA's tentacles have become elongated ? I. Only had one and it split a month ago and both of them have elongated tentacles. I bought another one from a friend last week and it was beautiful with bubble tips and today the tentacles have become elongated. I was thinking it was because of my lighting but here you guys say they dont need strong lighting

 

[BTJR]

Also my lighting is a t5 and my friends lighting is all led lighting

 

[frankthtank51]

Hello I have been in the hoppy for about a year and a glad and was curious what the difference was between the different lights they sell. I purchased a biocube 29 gallon and it has quad CFL lights. I was thinking about buying an upgrade for the lights and going with HQI or led. Would you guys be able to educate me alittle on the pro and cons between the different styles. My lights are on for 12 hours everyday, and I would like to start trying corals now.

 

[kretzkiller]

Here's a question for you. How come all 3 of my RTBA's tentacles have become elongated ? I. Only had one and it split a month ago and both of them have elongated tentacles. I bought another one from a friend last week and it was beautiful with bubble tips and today the tentacles have become elongated. I was thinking it was because of my lighting but here you guys say they dont need strong lighting

Do a couple quick searches on this form and/or google and you'll see this is a heavily debated topic. I don't think anyone has pinpointed a reason as to why the tentacles stop "bubbling" but they do. Mine have gone back and forth between bubble and not. Do you feed them regularly and if so, what? As long as they have a healthy appearance, eat regularly, and have decent light, quadricolors are extremely hardy - not to mention beautiful bubbly or not.

 

[kretzkiller]

Hello I have been in the hoppy for about a year and a glad and was curious what the difference was between the different lights they sell. I purchased a biocube 29 gallon and it has quad CFL lights. I was thinking about buying an upgrade for the lights and going with HQI or led. Would you guys be able to educate me alittle on the pro and cons between the different styles. My lights are on for 12 hours everyday, and I would like to start trying corals now.

If you wanted to keep the cfls you could get quite a few corals to grow under them. If you're thinking about new lights I'd go led or t5, both for cost efficiency and heat issues caused by halides. Plus if your bio cube has a hood you may need to raise a hqi high enough so it doesn't hurt your corals, then you deal with light seepage. Don't get me wrong, i love the look and benefits of halides but the cons of cost and heat are big enough for me to not justify them.

 

[staindsoul]

Help!

Help!

Ok here is the rbta.

The problem is he came in w/salinity of 1.028 from the local guy. Marine depot refractometer calibrated to 1.026 before I started. My tank is at 1.025. :headwallblue: do I need to drip for a extended period of time for this difference.

Also the local guy had it in a tub w/a cleanup crew for another guy, the only reason I mention it, I didn't know if they would have built up enough for detritus to build up ammonia with the ph changing

Any help is appreciated, ASAP. :lmao:

 

[staindsoul]

Picture of foot